Samuel Hawley

Samuel Hawley is a Canadian writer with BA and MA degrees in history from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He was born and grew up in South Korea and taught English there and in Japan for many years. His books include The Imjin War, the definitive account in English of Japan’s 16th-century invasion of Korea and attempted conquest of China; Speed Duel, about the 1960s rivalry between Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons for the world land speed record; Ultimate Speed, the authorized biography of land speed racing legend Craig Breedlove; and The Fight That Started the Movies: The World Heavyweight Championship, the Birth of Cinema and the First Feature Film.

Hawley's new novel is Daikon.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title Daikon is the nickname that the Japanese give to the atomic bomb they recover from the wreckage of the B-29 that crashes in chapter one. The bomb is very much a main character in the story in its own right. The other main characters Dr. Keizo Kan and Petty Officer Yagi open it up and explore it and get to know it, and then must put it together again for use in a suicide mission.

Actually, the title of the book was originally One Hundred Million Eat Stones, a reference to the determination that the Japanese people (the “Hundred Million”) would fight to the death rather than surrender. The Japanese had several popular slogans like that during the war referring to the “Hundred Million.” In the early days of victory the slogans were upbeat, like “One Hundred Million Hearts Beating Together.” Toward the end of the war, with defeat looming, they had become grimmer, “One Hundred Million as a Suicide Squad,” that sort of thing.

My agent suggested that a shorter title would be better, maybe something enigmatic and even whimsical to contrast with the seriousness of the story. “The Americans referred to the bomb as ‘Little Boy’ or the ‘gadget’ or the ‘gimmick,’” he said. “Maybe the Japanese came up with a nickname for it too. That could be the title.” He was right. It was a great idea. So that’s what I did. One of the characters observes that the bomb looks like a big black daikon radish. So it became "the Daikon," and that became the title of the book.

When the book was purchased by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, the publisher wanted to try other titles. I struggled for ages to come up with something else, but nothing worked. “The Light That Falls,” “We Live in Ruins,” and “The Flowers of Adversity” are three I came up with. The more I struggled to find another title, however, the more convinced I became that “Daikon” was the best title. And eventually we just stuck with that. Thank goodness!

What's in a name?

When I’m writing fiction, I compile lists of interesting names I encounter in research and reading, a stockpile of names to draw on as needed. With Daikon, since the characters are all Japanese, this stockpile was no use. There was some method to my name selections, though.

For the antagonist in the story, the army officer who wants to use the recovered atomic bomb against the Americans in order to stave off defeat and keep the war going, I wanted a name starting with an “S” like the hissing of a snake, and consisting of several syllables. So he became Colonel Sagara.

For the protagonist, the main character at the heart of the story, I wanted a one-syllable name to stand in contrast to the three syllables of Sagara. There are not many one-syllable names in Japanese. The first one to come to my mind was Kan. When I first went to Japan back in 1988, one of the Japanese teachers I had was named Kan. So I borrowed her name. It seemed perfect with the hard “K” too, another contrast to the hissing “S” of the nemesis Sagara. That “Kan” as spoken is also the English verb “can” (Keizo can do it!) never even occurred to me until later.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self would no doubt be surprised by my novel, but also very pleased. I was no Truman Capote in my teens, equipped to write brilliant novels, but I did have a longing to write books. It was the main reason I stayed on in university to do a master’s degree in history. I wanted to write a master’s thesis, a longer work. It was kind of like writing a book.

By my late 20s the yearning to write actual books that would be published had become stronger, but it took me a long time to make it happen. I was living in Japan then, and then later Korea, and doing a lot of traveling, so my earliest writing was travel pieces for magazines and newspapers. Some titles of articles I remember: “The Fishing Ponds of Tokyo” (a quirky Japanese hobby); “Snoring to Glory on the Mahalmaxi Express” (train travel in India); “Support Your Local Sekitori” (sumo wrestling in Japan); “Sri Lanka’s Bit of Britain” (a visit to Nurawa Eliya in Sri Lanka); “Down the Nile by Felucca” (Egypt travel in a traditional sailboat). There were many others. I ended up throwing everything away when I left Canada in 2021. All that stuff if gone now.

A writer back then who really impressed me was travel writer Paul Theroux, starting with his Great Railway Bazaar. His painting of scenes, his ability to capture language—absolute perfection. On the final page of that book, as Theroux is nearing the end of his long train journey, about to arrive back home, he flips back to the first page in his notebook and reads the entry he wrote when he first started out: “Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.” The story ends with Theroux reading the same words he wrote back at the beginning, making the journey a circle. The journey is a circle that takes you back home. The beauty of that just blew me away. I read it several times, flipping back and forth from first page to last, marveling at the brilliance. To write something like that, something so perfect—what a satisfaction it would be!

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I don’t find one more difficult than the other. I do like being able to write the ending first, though. Knowing how the story ends, knowing the actual scene, means that you know where you’re going, that the journey you’re taking your hero on isn’t just going to meander off into an uncharted wilderness where you can get bogged down as a writer.

With Daikon, it took me a long to to get the story right. But I had both the beginning and the ending written from very early on, and they stayed more or less unchanged. The novel opens with a bombing mission taking off from Tinian Island, bound for Japan with an atomic bomb. And it ends with our two main characters in a train station in Tokyo, on their way home. This is where I wanted them to be, reunited, with hope for the future. One of the first sentences I wrote for Daikon was in fact the very last sentence: “They followed the Americans onto the train.”

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Maybe inescapably, elements from an author’s own makeup find their way into the characters he writes about. In Daikon, I guess this applies most to the main character of Keizo Kan. I used some of my own fears and insecurities in my depiction of him, exaggerating them because he has been traumatized by the war and has had a nervous breakdown and is emotionally broken.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing? Music? Pictures? Movies? The news? The environment? Politics? Family?

For non-literary influences, it far and away would be movies. I actually took a long detour into writing screenplays during my career as an author of books. I’ve written 10 or so screenplays so far, including a spec script for a TV series based on my land speed racing nonfiction book “Speed Duel.” A few of my screenplays have been optioned over the years (“Homeowner With a Gun,” “Kill Them All,” “The Falls”), but none have ever made it into production.

When I first started writing narrative nonfiction, I would often think in terms of a scene from a movie to help frame a chapter, make the writing more interesting and alive, not just a recitation of facts. This is even more the case when I’m writing fiction. I’m often seeing in my mind’s eye the chapter I’m writing as a scene in a movie.

I also sometimes refer to screenplay structure when outlining the plot for a novel. This is a really useful tool to refer to when plotting out the story. It helps to build momentum.

Visit Samuel Hawley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Daikon.

--Marshal Zeringue